When progress sucks, gets better and then oscillates between the two in what seems like forever ~

~ God told me to be an artist, week 51.

Friday 15th December 2023.

It's almost a year since I started the blog! That feels totally wild and completely amazing.

I feel so so blessed to be able to write in this little corner of the internet and document the journey of following a creative calling. The ups, the downs, the everything.

Starting to write down my journey made it very real, and this past year has been just that...real.

It's been a process of stepping out of the boat and learning how to actually trust God with every single step, not just when I feel like it.

Especially when I don't feel like it.

I wasn't planning on doing a review of the year and all that it's meant to me, I wouldn't even know how to sum it up in a few short paragraphs, so I'll just say this, sometimes progress sucks.

It really does.

Now hear me out, this sounds like a contradictive sentence doesn't it, a bit dreary. I'm not about to start complaining, I promise. But the expansion I've faced this year, internally and externally, has been really hard.

Let me explain. Since I handed over my business to God a year ago he has made some significant moves. He has spoken life into ideas I didn't see coming, he has closed areas that I thought had real promise. He has guided me into competitions that ended up changing my life. He brought funds to cover unexpected bills and never let me reach breaking point. I must admit, I've been close a couple of times but he has always intervened. Never early but never late.

I've even been in a position where I actually had to pay some tax this year, as like many things this kind of progress hurt, tax bills are not fun. Not fun or easy to pay at all.

I don't feel like I'm walking out of this year with any kind of financial improvement, I'm still pretty broke, but the way I feel about my little business is so so different.

I feel rich in other ways.

I'm noticing the drive to build better stratergy and pay closer attention to how I spend. I'm responding better to internal prompts to go for, and not go for, certain work. A spirit of discernment is developing. I feel the pull towards to being a facilitator more than ever before and am noticing an affinity to working with children that I never hugely explored historically.

With God at the wheel, my business seems to be refining, strengthening and finding its way.

So why am I still so uncomfy? Why is blog about progress sucking when all that sounds so good, so positive?

Well it's because God is in the business of the long game. The fruits of this season are not materialsing just yet, they are seeds. He is sowing them in the direction of what is ahead. So yes, I do feel aligned and developing, but I'm more broke than ever in the process.

It's uncomfy.

It sucks because I'm human and I want everything to be safe, secure and simple to follow right from the outset. I'm impatient and although I try my best to trust God and notice the foundations he is building in the now, I struggle to do this so much.

I have trust issues with him all the time despite every way he has shown up in the past for me. Over and over and over again.

I don't think this is a plague particular to me. This is the way of the world, we want results, we want comfort and to live in the slip stream of jesus means we have to be a lot more open to a whole host of other things like, not knowing/ uncertainty/ not being in control/ growing pains amongst many other things in the pursuit of progress.

So at times, yes I'm not ashamed to admit it progress, and the journey to get there, sometimes can really suck! Like really really.

I ask myself why I'm doing it all the time. This week especially I had a bit of a wobble and one of my 'why am I self-employed existential crises' [they happen multiple times throughout the year]. During this wobble I suddenly felt called to say, 'nope I'm not worrying about this', and to hand it over.

So I did, out loud. I said, 'God I'm not worrying about this, I'm handing it over'. And at that moment I felt the holy spirit invite me to play Waymaker [Leeland Live version] and declare truth and life over the world, my family, circumstances and worries and it caused me to feel pretty giddy.

I knew in this moment that my increased worry again about the future was not something God was asking me to do solo. He would be right there beside me.

It's something that can be hard to believe with the state of the world, ever increasing bills, the mental health fallout of covid and fear of the future always playing on our minds. But in this moment I felt a peace that made no sense.

I knew I was in God's hands.

Was this my amazing brain deciding to be chill for a moment?

No, of course not. My little anxisou brain can't do that/

Did I get another wave of existential dread the next day and take to my bed?

Absolutley, I'm only human and the world is a scary place.

Does the choice to be a self-employed creative feel like a dumb one most days?

100%, but in the middle of all these sucky feelings that I have around it is God's prescence within me, a still small voice reminding me that the alignment I feel despite it all is worth it and all of this progress is not actually about my comfrot but my purpose and how it interlinks with other people in my life, city and future.

If I focus on the fact that God is about the big poctiure so I just need to foucs on what he asks of me, it all gets a little easier to tolerate.

So I guess, I'll just keep trying to do that?

I'll try to trust him when the progress is painful and pretty much sucks.

Because it won't forever, He's got a plan.

I guess I ended up doing a sumary of the year after all. Forgive me, you know what I'm like with tangents.

See you next week, Cath x